The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor (40 page)

The lesser charge of misprision – or failure to report treason – would not do at all. Montagu shook his head as the two lawyers stood before him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you were fleshed as we be, you would not stick at this matter.’ But Goodrick warned: ‘If you take this matter to be treason, let him be indicted and tried by the order of the common law, the fault might hereafter, the king coming to his age, be imputed to us; if it be done by Parliament we be discharged.’ In other words, at least if he were tried by his peers, the investigators could not be accused in years to come.

Sitting together at Westminster on 22 February, the Council was bullish, declaring that the charges against Thomas were ‘so manifestly proved against him by diverse ways that it appeared not able to be avoided but he should be guilty of them’.
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The councillors were not so confident, however, that they were prepared to commit him to trial without first obtaining a confession. It was therefore resolved that – as a body – they should go to the Tower the next day to interrogate their prisoner, ‘to the intent that he should, if he could, clear himself of them, or show some excuse or pretence, if he had any, whereby he could think to urge himself of them and avoid them’.

On 23 February, the councillors made their way to the Tower of London, setting up their base in a chamber to the side of the king’s gallery.
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By then, Thomas had been a prisoner for more than a month. The contrast between his bare prison walls and the opulence of the royal apartments must have seemed gaping to him. To begin with, he was given no chance to speak. Instead, Lord Rich, the lord chancellor, methodically read out the thirty-three articles against him. It was the first opportunity that Thomas Seymour had had to learn exactly
what
he was charged with. It was probably only now that the thoroughness of the investigations carried out became clear to him. When Rich’s monotone finally ended, the lord chancellor informed Seymour that this was his chance to clear himself – if he could.

Thomas Seymour shook his head. He ‘would answer to nothing laid to his charge, neither yea nor nay, except he had his accusers brought before him, and except he were brought in upon trial of arraignment, where he might say before all the world what he could say for his declaration’. The lords looked around, agreeing as one that this was a ‘very strange’ answer. Take ‘better advice,’ they told him sharply. Rich commanded him on his allegiance to the king to answer ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. Yet resolutely all he would say was that ‘if they would leave the articles with him he would thank them, but as for answering,’ he continued, ‘they should not look for it, for he would not do it otherwise than as he said before’.

At that, he was sent from the chamber with his guard, while the councillors deliberated. They were not prepared to read the articles again or show them to him if he would not answer. Calling Seymour in again, they ‘desired, moved, exhorted, prayed and commanded him to hear and answer to the said articles’, but Thomas ‘finally and obstinately’, in their words, refused their pleading. Thwarted, they left, returning him to his prison room. It was a hollow victory for Seymour. He must have realized that his chances of clearing his name in the face of the Council’s certainty of his guilt were now non-existent.

The following day the Council conveyed to the Protector everything that had happened in the Tower.
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Somerset, who had been diligently present at Council meetings, had so far kept his hands clean of the investigation. Nonetheless, he agreed to go with the Council after dinner to the king to report ‘both of such heinous and traitorous attempts and doings as the Lord Admiral had done and intended, and also of his obstinate refusal to answer to the same, or to excuse himself, if peradventure there might be any hope for him either to be proved guiltless or to receive pardon’. Somerset was irritated, for a confession from his brother would have saved the need for his own direct complicity in his fate. With the Council’s urging, it was agreed that Lord Rich should ask Edward what his mind was and whether he would be content for them to proceed by Parliament.

As soon as the eleven-year-old king had eaten, his Council came to him and set out everything. With one voice, they agreed that Seymour was guilty and should be attainted.
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Somerset nodded, declaring only ‘how sorrowful a case this was unto him’, but that ‘he did yet rather regard his bounden duty to the King’s Majesty and the Crown of England than his own son or brother’. He assured Edward that he ‘did weigh more his allegiance than his blood’ and therefore could not resist the Council’s request. He could not refuse justice, since he no longer considered his brother to be ‘worthy [of] life’.
*3

After listening, the boy-king immediately replied: ‘We do perceive that there is great things which be objected and laid to My Lord Admiral, mine uncle, and they tend to treason, and we perceive that you require but justice to be done. We think it reasonable, and we will well that you proceed according to your request.’ The speed of Edward’s reply, and the fact that he required no prompting, surprised his Council. They rejoiced, giving him hearty praise and thanks. Thomas Seymour would have been horrified – he believed that his nephew loved him. He was wrong.

Later on 24 February, a second deputation from the Council arrived at the Tower to inform Thomas that he was to be attainted for treason in Parliament. The group numbered members of the Lords and Commons: Lord Rich, together with the earls of Warwick, Shrewsbury and Southampton, along with Sir John Baker, Sir Thomas Cheney, Sir Thomas Smith and Sir Anthony Denny.
*4
After they assembled, at the chamber in the Tower that by now was almost becoming a court room,
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Seymour was brought in once more. He was asked again that he provide a defence and promised that it would be heard in Parliament.

To begin with, the delegation was met only with the Lord Admiral’s ‘stiff standing and refusal to answer’. Yet, in the face of their persuasions and cajoling, Seymour’s resolve finally broke. He agreed reluctantly to answer the articles.
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Rich again began to read them out.

To the first article, Seymour admitted his discussions with Fowler regarding the ease with which someone could kidnap the king, as well as his hopes to be appointed the boy’s governor. To the second article he confessed that he had given money to those about the king. He also mentioned that Edward himself had sent to him for money, a request he had obliged. To the third article, he agreed that he had drawn up a bill to appoint himself governor and had attempted to obtain the king’s agreement. But then his compliance faltered. When it came to the fourth article, which dealt with his attempts to draw the Council to his party during the Parliament of 1547, he stopped short. It was no good, he told those assembled, ‘he would answer to no more before them’ – and he refused all persuasions to answer anything else or even hear the remaining articles. He had made no mention of Elizabeth.

This might have been the point at which, with a firm hand, he carefully obliterated three pages of answers that he had previously begun to write out, heavily crossing through the words and rendering them illegible.
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He even scribbled through his signature at the foot of the third page. This erasure must have taken him some time to achieve. The Admiral’s fury was evident with every stroke of the pen. He would not answer for himself; as far as he was concerned, there was no cause to do so.
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He had committed no treason.

Seymour’s interrogators thus returned from the Tower with his answers to the first three articles only, which had been written on a separate sheet. It was the last time Thomas would be so examined. Having refused to mount a defence, he rested his hopes entirely in the hands of Parliament. His insistence that ‘he had a right to a public hearing’ by trial went ignored.
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On the following day, 25 February, Lord Protector Somerset – for all his protestations of sorrow – led the Lords into the Parliament chamber. They crowded in, but, to the disappointment of those assembled, the attainder of Thomas Seymour was low down the agenda. They found themselves forced instead to sit through the reading of bills against unlawful hunting and for the regulation of merchants going to Iceland.

At last the moment was reached, as, against a hush, the Bill of Attainder against the Protector’s own brother was read out. It did not disappoint, being drafted in the most lurid terms. There were claims that the Admiral ‘not having God before his eyes’ and ‘filled with the most dangerous, insatiable, and fearful vice of ambition and greediness of rule, authority and dominion’ did intend to take the king into his possession ‘by violence, stealth or other undue means’ and take on the role of Protector and governor of the boy-king.
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To prove the accusations, the witness depositions were then read out. Amid the clamour of voices, some of Thomas’s accusers were brought in to be examined, standing bare-headed before the Lords.
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Towards the end of the session, the judges and the Council declared ‘plain the case to be manifest treason’.
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That was enough for the day, and the Lords could go to their homes for dinner.

The next day, with Somerset again in attendance, the bill received its second reading, with its third on Wednesday 27 February. Now, it was time to vote, and the House was again packed to the rafters. With one voice, the Lords cried out ‘yea!’ Only Somerset, ‘for natural pity’s sake’, abstained.
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He would not add his voice to the final condemnation of his brother – but, then, it was not required. He remained in his seat in the chamber.

With the passing of the bill in the Lords, it moved to the Commons. If Thomas had any hopes of a reprieve, it was in the Lower House of Parliament, filled with the gentlemen and yeomen he had done so much to charm and win to his side. Unusually, the Lords decided to send down a deputation with the bill, to declare ‘the manner after the which the Lords had proceeded in this matter’.
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They promised that they would send the noblemen who had given evidence against Seymour to declare ‘by mouth and presence, such matter as by their writing should in the mean time appear unto them’. The Master of the Rolls, who carefully carried the bill before him, went over to the Lower House, walking with two companions from the Lords. They found the Commons – who outnumbered the Lords four to one – assembled in great number. Despite Parliament’s prevailing absenteeism, on 28 February everyone had come to the Commons hear the first reading of the bill against Thomas Seymour.
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As expected, it was a turbulent session. Why, asked some of the members, had the Admiral received no trial?
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Some spoke up on his behalf, demanding that he be allowed to defend himself personally, but such protests were ignored. The second reading, on the following day, was equally rumbustious, so much so that the Lords, listening from their own chamber to reports, doubted whether it would pass.

On 1 March, the same three gentlemen from the Lords, along with the king’s solicitor, returned to the Commons to find out whether they intended to pass the bill.
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They would consult once again, the Commons informed them, but hoped to send up their resolution with speed. In the Lords it appeared that the Lower House proceeded interminably slowly. Eventually, tired of waiting, the Lords went for their dinners, extracting only the promise that the Commons would inform Somerset of their decision before the Lords sat again on Monday 4 March.
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The Protector waited – but no decision arrived. That Monday, with still no word from the Commons, the Master of the Rolls and his fellows returned once again to the Commons, squeezing into the packed room. It was the ‘King’s Majesty’s pleasure’, they declared, that Thomas was not – as the Commons had requested – to be permitted to appear in his own defence. Instead, if they were still uncertain, the Lords were prepared to come ‘to satisfy the House for the evidence against the Admiral’. Even with this assurance, the Commons debated and argued. The lawyers among them, though, declared that the offences were indeed ‘in the compass of high treason’. The Speaker – who had visited Thomas in the Tower a few days before – demanded to know whether anyone could show that it was not treason; they could not. Out of a packed Commons chamber, ‘marvellous full’ with 400 people crammed into it, as they came to the vote only ten or twelve members ultimately dissented. The bill had passed, and the king’s younger uncle was – in the eyes of the law – already dead.